Steady Progress

Recently a new patch was released with some new changes, most notably was the new STF, Undine Teradome, and the overhaul to Memory Alpha & crafting. Now, of course, I can’t try out the STF yet (still only Commander rank), but I’ve tried out the new Memory Alpha changes and have to say I’m very pleased. There’s still a lot needed, and frankly the Champion Online crafting system would make a lot more sense in STO than either the current or previous crafting system, but for now the biggest gripe I have about the updates is the huge lack of decent recipes.

The new system makes a lot more sense than before; it’s the same in that you still need to collect the anomalies like before, but now you can see your current progress and the recipes, both what you know and what you have yet to learn, anywhere in the game, as well as your progress in the crafting skill tiers. You have to be at Memory Alpha to actually craft, and near the proper crafting tier console. If you’ve tried the crafting before you’ll note I didn’t say “proper NPC”; the crafting is no longer done like a currency in a store; you have to be at the right crafting console, have the right materials, and crafting now has a progress timer when you make an item, similar to the ones used when opening a box in a ground mission. This makes the system more akin to WoW crafting, but with a few minor differences, like needing to be at the actual console at Memory Alpha, and leveling the crafting tiers doesn’t require you to crank out nearly as many items as WoW. Frankly, I like this, if not for the lack of items to actually craft. There’s really not that much, and one of my Canadian Federation fleeties has already figured out the needed items & costs to master all crafting levels in half an hour, and the cost is relatively minimal. The potential is there, however, and adding recipes shouldn’t be terribly difficult.

For now, crafting is still rather disappointing, and frankly the only reason I’m going to do it is 1) to get the high-end quantum torpedoes in the crafting tree, and 2) to be able to say I maxed it out (even though that’s not much of a feat).

On the horizon are some changes I’m eager for, especially the social and fleet updates. Here’s an example of the new in-game Fleet Calendar that’s in testing on the Tribble server at the moment:

There’s some discussion going on about it on the official servers in this thread. Looks like it’s coming along, but at the moment every fleet member has a limit of only 3 events to post, though recurring events only count as one regardless how often it repeats. I think that’s stupid, especially as there’s issues with events being removed from the calendar.5 or 6 per member makes more sense, or even better set a restriction of how many events based on your rank in your fleet, similar to bank withdraw limitations. I’d also prefer if it were actually made to look like a traditional calendar rather than just a list of events.

All in all, some great progress, but as much as I love this game and love the progress, I can’t in good conscience recommend this game to anyone but a hard-core star trek fan. The game is coming along very nicely, but still feels like it’s in beta testing. In a few months, however, when all these improvements have had a chance to be implemented and be around a while, it’s gonna be too awesome to NOT recommend ^_^